Things I don’t tell Mom

There was a time, long ago before my eyes starting going bad and when foolishness was that bit of mischief all of us get into whether someone is there to see it or not, and that our parents secretly laugh about because it was the same stuff they did.

I was Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp with my bb-gun. No, I didn’t have a Red Rider, I had a Crossman! And, I was a wiz, the terror of chipmunks everywhere. And, of course, me and my friend Benny had bb-gun fights, but we had a rule: no shooting in the face.

Some of you who have read my past writings are not surprised by this, but some of you may for the first time realize that yes, the boy is that dumb. And you have also recognized that this is, yes, another post on the demise of Charlie Kirk by someone who mistakenly believed a gun would solve his problems.

As I grew older I advanced my gun ownership advanced to a Marlin 22, then later to an older 30-06. I liked guns – until one day I realized that gun could solve all my problems, all my days of hatred, loneliness, my want to be different than what I was. One simple pull of one simple finger…

Dad talks of a time when he was in school and was part of an after-school gun club. He would get on the school bus with his gun and take it to school for his after hours activities. I remember when I took my hunter safety courses as a kid. Guns then were a tool; it was how we went hunting, sport targets, and in extreme moments perhaps, personal safety. Somehow they have gone beyond this. Now there are magazines by the truck-load telling us how we need a personal protection weapon as they peddle fear. Our politicians aren’t talking about how we need to deal with the issues that people think they need a gun to help them, but how they have the right to guns and how great and cool guns are.

I guess I’m a horrible person, because I just couldn’t really care less that Kirk is gone. He wasn’t an innocent by any stretch of the word. He advocated hate, he advocated second-class citizenry for those he didn’t like, he advocated for the right of the government to limit the rights of others that he didn’t like, and he even advocated for the loss of life so the importance of keeping his gun rights could be underscored. He advocated for the very scenerio that took his life, in a crushing bit of sad irony.

Who I do care about are those small children in that Catholic School who were shot while praying. No one flew them home on Air Force 2. I didn’t see Cenk Uygur crying for them! I didn’t the sitting republican party politicians calling out in outrage. I didn’t see fucking drumpf demanding retribution for the victims of the Colorado High School that happened that very same day! Somehow seeing one of their own shot was a bridge too far and little innocent children was not. And now, seeing that the shooter was a cis white male maga son of a cop, there went their favorite scape-goat that he was a plant of the Democrats.

But, evidently the nra checks cleared because I’m not seeing any hopeful measures to limit guns to ANYONE! Oh, let me take that back – drumpf wants to limit guns to the Trans community. Haven’t heard from the nra about the atrocity of such a statement yet…?

I once asked myself just what it would take before our children and young people became more important than our guns. I wondered what would it finally be to get people to demand that there be no more. Then I realized that the fear, the anger, the hatred that has been generated has just made us all tense and numb to it all; we are forlorn to the realization that it will never change because those in power are all too willing to sacrifice everything we care deeply about and even one of their corrupt mouthpieces to the money and power that death brings them.

I Don’t Have The Heart For a Peace & Justice Newsletter Today

It will return.

“There is not peace in many of our cities because there is not freedom.” – Pres. John F. Kennedy

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september10

Catching Up With Clay Jones & Open Windows

We were out for a while yesterday, so I didn’t get as much done here. I have a trove, and here it is:

Dear Leader’s cabinet meeting by Ann Telnaes

A three hour marathon of flattery and groveling Read on Substack

I didn’t think the outright ass-kissing could get any worse than his first term’s cabinet meetings…

====================

Your Favorite Dictator by Clay Jones

Trump engages in dictator talk…again Read on Substack

Why would Donald Trump talk about becoming an American dictator…again?

NBC News reporter: Before signing a series of executive orders aimed at reducing crime in D.C. and across the nation, Trump referred to his critics bashing him for sending the National Guard to D.C., claiming that some people think they might “like a dictator.”

Referring to militarizing our cities, Trump said, “They say, ‘We don’t need him, freedom freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.’ A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator’…You send in troops, and instead of being praised they’re saying you’re trying to take over the republic. These people are sick.”

Before the election, Trump talked about “deleting” parts of the Constitution he doesn’t like. Then, he talked about becoming a dictator for one day. Now, he says some people in this country want a dictator, but to whom is he referring to that would be that dictator? I think we all know the answer. The dictator talk is so disturbing that everyone missed that part where he whines that he’s not being praised. (snip-MORE; go read it!)

Mass Mass Shooting by Clay Jones

And another school shooting Read on Substack

(The money graf: “Even the shooter offered “thoughts and prayers” to the intended victims. So, quite frankly, every single Republican’s answer to this isn’t any better than the shooter’s solution.”)

Another mass shooting and another opportunity for Republicans to give us empty thoughts and prayers instead of real solutions. You can’t find a solution when you can’t even identify the problem.

Today’s mass shooting just so happened to take place during a Mass.

An 8-year-old and a 10-year-old were killed while sitting in pews during a Mass at the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At least 17 people have been injured. The students were from the adjacent Annunciation Catholic School.

Robin Westman, a 23-year-old, has been identified as the shooter and shot through the windows from outside the church. Westman identified as a woman and had changed her name from Robert to Robin. The right-wing fucknuts are going to love this, but they’ll ignore the parts about the mental issues and racism.

The shooter left a manifesto that called for the destruction of Israel and included racist slurs. Westman flashed a white supremacy sign in a video that showed the shooter’s massive gun collection. The shooter admired those responsible for the massacres at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, among others. (snip-MORE, and it’s good info)

Assault Sandwich Ban by Clay Jones

Anything to avoid the truth. Read on Substack

There’s a saying in the legal system that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It’s a criticism of the prosecutorial system because a prosecutor has near-total control of the evidence presented to a grand jury, the defense is not present, and the jury only has to be convinced a crime was committed without a real burden of proof, and on the flimsiest charges.

On Tuesday, a grand jury in Washington, DC, refused to indict Sean Charles Dunn, who is accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a Border Patrol agent. This is a huge loss for US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who was hired only because Donald Trump liked the way she looked on Fox News. She’s very hateful and always outraged. This is also a failure for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who declared the sandwich attack was part of the “deep state.

I don’t think we have to worry about a “deep state” if the worst they can do is throw sandwiches at cops.

Anyone charged with a federal felony must be indicted by a grand jury. The problem for Trump’s regime is that the voters in Washington, DC, are some of the most intelligent, most educated, and most aware of the issues. These are not West Virginia voters. You would think that if you wanted to indict someone with a felony, you wouldn’t call a grand jury while the city is occupied by the military.

You would think that with the government’s reaction to the sandwich attack, the accused had used one of the weapons used to murder children at a Catholic Church in Minneapolis this week. The Trump regime and Republicans have more outrage over an assault by a sandwich than outrage over a school shooting. (snip-MORE if you can handle it)

What We Can Do, And What We Can Help Our Leaders Do-

Linked on TenBears’s blog.

A key point: Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

======================================

As Real As It Gets

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 25, 2025

Something Jason Sattler wrote yesterday needs repeating this morning:

Everything we do makes it easier for our neighbors to stand up or sit down for this regime. We all know there’s a crisis coming that will force all who pay attention to make a choice that could define the rest of their lives.

Will people do it? In most cases, it depends on what they see us doing next.

SEE us doing. That’s the key.

How the less-engaged make up their minds about political matters, Anand Giridharadas observed (based on Anat’s work), is more akin to how they decide to buy pants: What’s everyone else wearing this year? What are normal people like me doing? Not in one-and-done big rallies but every day. Your resistance must be visible and persistent for that to work and give the less engaged permission to join the resistance movement. Calling your senator five days a week is fine, but which of your neighbors sees that?

Plus, if you want people to join your party, throw a better party. We’re out in the streets multiple times a week now. I bring dance music.

A friend pointed to this TikTok by someone going by @logicnliberty. She advocates a unified front by blue-state governors with trifectas. It’s not that they are not already unified, coordinating, and suing. They are. Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul are speaking out and holding press conferences. (State AGs too.) But not necessarily as a team. Are they leveraging their trifectas proactively to erect firewalls in their states against Trump’s gutting of the Constitution? They should.

(snip-TikTok video embedded on the page)

Would the press cover it if they did? We are already in the slow civil war Jeff Sharlet described. The blue and the gray meets the blue and the red. Run with it. The press loves controversy. Generate more, blue state governors.

Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

And those actions must be not only public, but in-your-face public. Their actions and yours.

Update: Read it. It’s where your neighbors are.

The human heart hangs on to hope until there’s no other choice. People will not fight back in the ways that will work, until they realize there is no other choice, until the only other choice is their own imprisonment or death, or that of someone they love. For many of us, that moment is already here. But for most of us, it’s not.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 – Labor Day events
May Day Strong Labor Day Events
No King’s One Million Rising movement
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink – Search on Labor Day events near you
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

ICE, Gaza, DC Takeover & Building Power | Rep. Maxwell Frost

I have been waiting for the show to clip this interview. I watched it live when he was interviewed. I was blown away by Frost. He is the kind of Democratic elected members we need and the kind of candidates we should vote for. Please give the interview a watch. Hugs

A few news articles I wanted to share. Crazy, hateful, and mean.

Trump Admin “Effectively Legalizes” Machine Guns

DOJ Wants To Make It Easier To Indict Congress Reps

AP: How Trump Is Scrubbing His Admin’s Records

FDA Approves New COVID Vax With Strict Conditions

Federal Judge Rules That DHS Must Keep Custody Of Migrants Shipped To South Sudan Pending His Ruling

Inside The Christianist Plot To Quash Gaza Protests

Wow. A group that initially included no Jews hatched a plan to make support for Palestine a crime. The US is following their playbook and supporting the mass killing & removal of Palestinians.Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u…

— David Schatsky (@dschatsky.bsky.social) 2025-05-18T10:24:52.522Z

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi: “America Is Sliding Into Autocracy”

Rule Change Would Let Trump Fire Federal Statisticians

Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsProposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenientwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…

— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) 2025-05-18T17:03:59.368Z

Major Corporate Sponsors Withdraw From NYC Pride

Here’s the list:

Anheuser-Busch
Booz Allen Hamilton
Citi
Comcast
Deloitte
Diageo
Garnier
Nissan
PepsiCo
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Skyy Vodka
Target
Mastercard

US Army To Alter Birth Records Of Transgender Troops

Exclusive: US Army to change transgender soldiers' records to birth sex reut.rs/4dvNxhZ

— Reuters (@reuters.com) 2025-05-21T15:40:15.551Z

Hegseth Leads Pentagon Prayer For “Divine” Trump

FDA Orders New Warning Labels On COVID Vaccines

Felon Explodes At “Idiot, Jerk, Fake News” Reporter For Asking About Qatari Jet: “You Are Not Smart Enough”

Please Share Liberally-

A Mother’s Plea About America’s Accommodation to School Shootings

What the ‘f does it take?

It really says a lot to me, to be honest, that republicans can’t manage to find any outrage or seek any solutions to the gun problem when our children, innocent school kids, are shot where they are supposed to be safe.

The Sad Truth is that politicians are rarely concerned about anything deeper than their wallet. The rare times they seem willing to do the right thing is when something deeper is at jeapardy: Their ass! We saw this in drumpf’s directed coup attempt on the Capital. We saw this in irony when House GOP Whip Steve Scalise was shot playing softball that “No Democrats called for gun control after a republican was short” (insert tears here). Most notably, we saw it when Reagan was shot.

“In 1991, Reagan supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named for his press secretary shot during the 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life. That bill passed in 1993, mandating federal background checks and a five-day waiting period. “Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics,” Reagan wrote in the NY Times. “This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes, and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.” Reagan turned against gun regulations in the 1970s, but his views shifted back sometime after he was shot by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981. Reagan’s views on gun control appear to be influenced by his personal experiences with people aiming guns at him.” (Peter Weber)

““The NRA is not there to promote the safety of our children, the NRA is not there to promote the safety of Americans generally. The NRA is not even there to promote the safety of gun owners,” Sen. Warren told me. “The NRA is there to advance the interests of exactly one group, and that’s gun manufacturers to help boost their profits. We have to remember that’s who the NRA represents.” (Shannon Watts)

But, hey. I’m just one of those weak liberals that somehow don’t need a to wave a gun around to prove I’m manly. What the hell do I know. Hugs. -randy

No Foolin’-Sen. Booker’s Doin’ Something With Substance!

(Plus more Dem Senators pitchin’ in! Go see-video below)

Cory Booker Holding Senate Floor All Night Long (All Night), All Night Long (All Night) by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Washington Post takes pains to tell us it’s not REALLY a filibuster. Read on Substack

Since 7 p.m. Eastern yesterday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) has held the Senate floor, speaking out against what Donald Trump and his evil coconspirators are doing to America. He was still going when we started this piece at 8:30 this morning, and we expect he’ll still be going when we click “Publish.”

Booker began the all-night speech by making his intentions clear:

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy. These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”

While we were writing this piece, Booker was every bit as impassioned as he condemned the Republican budget plan that would slash Medicaid and the social safety net so billionaires and corporations could have (more) huge tax cuts, adding trillions to the US debt, asking, “If you’re a Christian conservative, how can you hurt the weak to benefit the rich and powerful? The people of the United States have to stand up and say ‘NO!’”

This man does not look like he’s been speaking for more than 14 hours. Here’s the AP’s live feed. Watching this, we’re even feeling some hope — especially if other senators follow up with marathon speeches of their own.

(And it’s still running! -A)

Also too, we’re going to go ahead and call this a filibuster anyway, if only because the Washington Post went out of its way to explain in its subhead (archive link) that it’s not actually a filibuster because Booker isn’t delaying a vote on legislation. Just seems like the sort of nitpick best saved for the body of the article, which is where all the other outlets have placed it. So why did we mention it in our subhed? Because fuck WaPo is why.

Booker received help throughout the night — and still, this morning — from other senators, because he is allowed to take questions, which tend to come in the form of brief speeches ending with a question mark. But it’s not just a tactic to help him preserve his voice; it’s also a chance for fellow Democrats to show their unity, with multiple voices pointing out how completely not normal the last two months have been. Booker and other senators called out Trump and co-president Elon Musk for multiple assaults on democracy, like their attempts to shut down federal agencies created by Congress, to cancel spending authorized by Congress, to withhold grants to nonprofits that were already awarded, to fire large segments of the federal workforce without regard to worker protections, and to effectively dissolve America’s alliances by siding with Russia against Ukraine and our European allies. And much more.

We should also note that, unlike the longest talking filibuster on record, old racist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond’s 25-hour filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights bill, Mr. Booker doesn’t have the opportunity to take restroom breaks. Now that’s impressive.

During the speech, Booker repeatedly reminded Republicans — for any good it might do — that many of them saw who Donald Trump was, and why he was no good for America. He spoke with genuine affection about John McCain, who had the courage to shut down Trump’s attempt to end Obamacare:

“Senator McCain, I know you wouldn’t sanction this, I know you would be screaming, I’ve seen how angry you can get, John McCain. I’ve seen you tear people apart on this floor, Democrat and Republican, for doing the same stupid thing over and over again. Listen to John McCain explain why he voted ‘no’ the last time the Republican Party tried to unite and tear down health care with no idea how to fix it, threatening to put millions of Americans in financial crisis and health care crisis. I can’t believe we are here again.”

Booker returned again and again to that theme: Why on earth are we allowing this madness to happen? How on earth are we in a situation where a US president is threatening to invade our allies and help our adversaries?

As we wrap up here, Booker’s voice is beginning to get a little raspy, but his overall energy isn’t flagging so far. At the moment, he’s having a colloquy with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) about the importance of US foreign assistance, which Trump and musk have unconstitutionally slashed. Coons called attention to how those cuts have left us unable to provide help to the victims of the earthquake in Myanmar — and Booker immediately pointed out that by wrecking America’s soft power, Trump has handed all that influence to China.

We hope Booker keeps going a couple more hours. And that as many of his Democratic colleagues follow his example with filibusters of their own. (snip)